No Wings Attached (Branded) / Stella Deleuze

Reviewed by: ?wazithinkin

Genre: Paranormal Romance

Approximate word count: 80-85,000 words

Availability   

Kindle US: YES UK: YES Nook: NO Smashwords: NO Paper: NO

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Author:

Stella Deleuze writes in several genres: humor, romance, literary, and contemporary fiction. Having spent most of her life in Germany, she now lives in London with her pet iguana Zorro. For more information, please visit her website.

Description:

“Life couldn't get any worse for 32-year-old Celia: single again and working in two jobs she hates; the last thing she needs is falling for gorgeous, out-of-her-league, arrogant Tom. Being a wish-consultant, Tom has to make up for a failed case and is sent to make her wishes come true without his usual skills. Not easy when she's reluctant to talk to him. In order to help her become happy, he needs to win her trust and unexpectedly develops feelings he shouldn't have. When finally everything seems to fall into place for Celia, she receives a phone call that turns her world upside down once again.”

Appraisal:

Poor Celia is down on her luck and nothing is going her way. Tom is also having a bit of his own bad luck and has been assigned to fulfill her wishes without any of his normal skills to assist him. This means he is basically human with a few angel connections and his devastating good looks. There is also a bad force that the Angel Management can sense but apparently cannot locate or pin down exactly what is going on. So here is the story, there is obviously something going on around Celia and an angel is sent to help her without any of his powers to assist? I found this concept hard to believe and I didn’t buy it.

Tom has to rely on his charm alone to get to know Celia and her dreams for a happy life. In the process he falls in love with her and her with him, so now we have two star-crossed lovers floundering in a sea of bad forces. I think Management is playing games with these two souls and I think the twist in the plot at the end of the story proves this and leaves the story open for a sequel to follow.

This story is told through Tom and Celia with alternating viewpoints that are clearly marked at the heading of each chapter. Using this style of writing is a good way to understand what each character understands and feels, but the story can be repetitive. Somewhere along the way I became disconnected from the characters. I feel a good round of editing to remove much of the extraneous mundane details that are repeated from each point of view to focus on the actual story would do wonders for this book. There is an interesting story here, it just gets lost in all the words.

FYI:

This book contains British spelling; however, it was not too difficult to follow the British slang.

Format/Typo Issues:

There were a number of proofing errors as well as copy editing issues.

Rating: ** Two stars